Ruth Mary Cavendish-Bentinck (née St Maur; 21 October 1867 – 28 January 1953) was a Morocco-born British aristocrat, suffragist and socialist. Her library was the basis for what is now the Women's Library.
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Early life
Bentinck was born in Tangier in 1867, the illegitimate daughter of aristocrat Ferdinand Seymour, Earl St. Maur, and a housemaid, Rosina Elizabeth Swan. Her father was the son and heir of Edward, 12th Duke of Somerset, and his wife, Georgiana Sheridan (a daughter of Thomas Sheridan and the novelist Caroline Callander).
Her parents brought her to England, where they had a son, Harold St. Maur, but her father died in 1869 and they never married. She and her brother were brought up by her paternal grandparents after her mother married again and her stepfather died. Her illegitimacy was a problem during her childhood but this was balanced by the education and care that her de facto parents gave her. They also gave her their surname. When her grandmother died in 1884 she was left £80,000 (equivalent to £8,595,000 in 2025).
Political involvement
In 1909, she joined the Women's Social and Political Union. This was a militant organisation who believed in "Deeds not Words". Bentinck did wear a sandwich board but unlike many of its members she was never arrested. She wrote The Point Of Honour: A Correspondence On Aristocracy And Socialism in 1909. The third key event in 1909 was founding a library that was to become in time the Women's Library.